Noon

Subtle and haunting, Noon is the story of Rehan Tabassum, a young man who has seen a childhood of uncertainty, and whose vulnerability has rendered him a gaze so keen that it divines easily the shifts around him: his mother and her new husband, the emergence of a dazzling new India, the retreat of the old, muted order of dust and shortages, and the swell of a suppressed people. In this uncompromising yet unexpectedly tender third book, Aatish Taseer maps a difficult period in India and Pakistan, a period of deep upheavals, whose true direction is elusive. By presenting Rehan’s journey through lands of sudden wealth and hidden violence, in an atmosphere of political quicksand and moral danger, Taseer brings us into closer contact with a world experiencing convulsive change. Stark, brave, and absolutely compelling, Noon confirms Aatish Taseer as a writer of emotional acuity and great intellectual gift.

Aatish Taseer was born in 1980. He is the author of Stranger to History: a Son’s Journey through Islamic Lands (2009) and The Temple Goers (2010), which was shortlisted for the 2010 Costa First Novel Award. He lives between London and Delhi.